7 - Interactions between Jewish and Christian Astronomers in the Iberian Peninsula

Summary

In the Iberian Peninsula, the sciences, especially astronomy, were a meeting ground for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars during the Middle Ages, to the point that it is sometimes impossible to separate the works of members of the different communities. In the Late Middle Ages, from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, the activities of Christian scholars became increasingly significant, and their interactions with Jewish scientists living in the same territory became increasingly varied. In this chapter, it is argued that astronomers of the two faiths collaborated in many different ways and that intellectual collaboration in astronomy was maintained even at times of rampant religious intolerance. These relationships were chiefly personal, rather than institutional, and their intensity varied according to the social and political conditions of the time. There are many examples of these working relationships, but this chapter focuses on four episodes, which differ in nature and took place in different centuries.

SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION

The first example of collaboration, which occurred in the twelfth century, belongs to the domain of scientific translation. The main characters are two learned scholars, the Jew, Abraham Bar Ḥiyya, and the Christian, Plato of Tivoli.